The Ondrus men might have laid claim to starting the Toledo hardware store that’s carried their name for the last century, but it was a hard-working woman from the present day Czech Republic who deserves the true credit.
Rose Ondrus, who came to Toledo in the early 1900s as a 14-year-old immigrant without knowing a word of English, established a dry goods store on Consaul Street in the Birmingham neighborhood in 1916. By the 1930s, she was selling hardware.
